The Quixotic Story of The Dark Night of the Soul of Santa Cruz Futebol Clube.

Monday, 29 October 2012

Darkness On The Edge of Town

It was a
close run thing there, for a while. Two Pernambuco state championships in two
years. The despised Recife B trodden on like so much dried pigeon dung, Recife
Jr. put firmly back in their little pink and white box. And if escape from Serie D was more digging a tunnel under
the prison walls with bare hands than gliding out of Colditz, who was complaining?
The slide had been reversed, Santa were on the rise, and promotion to Serie B was surely a formality.

Things were
getting dangerously close to looking up.

Until
yesterday, when normal service was unhappily restored. Somewhere in the wilds
of Pará (a state where things can get pretty wild indeed), the club that
boasted the 39th biggest average attendance in the world while
playing in Serie D last year (38,000)
contrived to lose 1-0 to Águia de Marabá, and ended up out of the play-off
spots. It will be the decidedly undercooked fare of Serie C again next year.

In some
ways it is hard to know what went wrong. The players that drifted into
Arruda during the year all looked passable on paper (and there were six of them in
the team yesterday), but in the main, failed to reproduce on the pitch. Part of
that failure is no doubt due to the insane MAKE-IT-HAPPEN-NOW culture of
Brazilian football, which grows madder still in the short seasons of the lower divisions.
A newly arrived midfield schemer will be given two games to transform himself
into Xavi and Iniesta combined before being branded a flop, and woe betide the
striker who fails to score on his debut – he’ll likely be warming the bench
next week. Part of it is due to this being Serie
C, and Santa being in straitened financial circumstances (the crowds may be
big but the debt pile is bigger still), which means the calibre of athlete, home
grown youngsters aside, is unlikely to be very high.

There were
specific failures. The loss of excellent goalkeeper Thiago Cardoso to injury
was a bitter blow, and neither Diego Lima or Fred convinced as his replacement.
There were too many changes at the back, where Santa played without a recognised
left back (and a pretty hard to recognise right back, Diogo) for most of the
year. Perhaps the greatest problem was a lack of creation in the middle. Talented
but gossamer light youngster Natan was lost to injury yet again, and Weslley
has been on a decline since the 2011 Campeonato
Pernambucano win. Veteran Luciano Henrique impressed in spurts, but not
consistently, and late arrivals Leaozinho and Leandro Oliveira flattered to
deceive. Up front, Denis Marques was perhaps the villain of the piece – looking
good enough on occasion to convince tricolors
he was The Answer, but missing far too many chances (and penalties) when it
mattered. The lack of a decent strike partner didn´t help – the powerful but
decrepit Fabricio Ceará was useful only for carrying heavy kit bags from the
team bus to the changing room, while the adulation afforded Flãvio Rat Hunter
surely drips with irony.

And then
there was Zé. Mr. Teodoro stepped on the
ball in epic fashion in 2012. A terror of losing (understandable, given the
gun-to-the-temple nature of his job) meant that even the lowliest of opposition
was treated with fearful dread, and three volantes
(defensive midfielders) became the norm (the hopeless Chicão became, incomprehensibly, a regular). On what seemed like hundreds of
occasions, Santa would fail to make their lumbering pressure count early on,
the opposition would break away and score, and Zé would be forced to hurl on
attacker after attacker in an attempt to chase the game. Tactically speaking,
it was grossly incompetent, made worse by a refusal to recognise the obvious flaws
and modify the system. Such tactics had served Santa well against bigger teams
(São Paulo and Recife B were both put to the sword in this way), but
against Treze, Cuiabá and Guarany de Sobral it was hardly appropriate.
Ultimately, this lack of confidence and reluctance to attack may have cost
Santa promotion (Fortaleza aside, the division was not particularly strong).

Which leaves
Santa once again in the slough of despond. The financial impact will be felt
hard (three home play-off games at Arruda would have generated well over R$1,000,000 in receipts). Worse is the long-term effect the defeat may have.
For oddly enough, despite yesterday´s tragedy, Santa, under the guidance of
president Antonio Luiz Neto, have become a model of responsible football
management. There is clear evidence of a long term plan – despite at least
three vociferous campaigns for the removal of Zé Teodoro over the last 12
months by the more imbecilic elements of the Arruda crowd, ALN has remained
calm, and stressed the importance of “the project”. “Why on earth would we sack
a manager who took us out of Serie D and
won us our first state championships in six years?” has been the remarkably
mature thinking. As a result, after two years in charge, Zé Teodoro, has become
a kind of less successful, lower division Alex Ferguson of Brazilian football. And
Santa´s fortunes have, compared to where they started, followed a largely
upward curve. At least a dozen Serie A clubs
should take note.

And yet it
is no longer so easy to justify maintaining Mr. Teodoro as Santa´s coach. Throughout
2012 he has shown himself to be tactically limited, though that may in part be
down to the players he has had to work with, and the manic in-out-in-out signing culture that exists in the lower divisions. It is fair to ask if
things are likely to improve much in 2013. But on the other hand, stability and
continuity are priceless advantages in this part of the world, and if the less
stagnant elements of the playing staff can be retained, there is no reason why
Santa cannot learn from their mistakes and achieve promotion next year.

Complicating
the issue are the looming presidential elections. More than a few comments on
Twitter after yesterday’s game wanted not just #ZéTeodoroOut but also #ALNOut,
while another said that if the president wanted to lose the election, all he
had to do was to extend Zé Teodoro´s contract. Those banging their bloodied
knuckles on the windows and howling for vengeance are, of course, unlikely to
have given much thought to whom might take over as manager or club president.

See A Darkness listened to last night´s game on the radio.
When it was over, and the kitchen walls started to close in, he took himself
out into the stifling Goiãnia night to seek solace in the
bottom of a glass. He drank alone, as he often does, and as he considered how
heavy life´s burdens can sometimes be, he remembered another night, four years
ago, amidst the Dickensian horrors of Salvador´s Pelourinho district. He drank
alone that night too, only pausing to call friends in Recife and find out the
score of Santa’s final game in Serie C
against Salgueiro. It finished 2-2, and Santa were improbably relegated to Serie D. The smothering heat of the
night, the shadowy figures moving through the darkness, the sense of aching
disappointment – maybe not that much has changed in those four years after all.

And perhaps
there´s some comfort in that. After all, the journey´s half the fun, and the
destination is usually a disappointment when you get there. Though these are
sentiments unlikely to be appreciated by tricolores on this most dismal of mornings.

1 comment:

I just moved to Brasilia about six weeks ago and am working to become a writer covering Brazilian Soccer (I'm currently writing at footballdobrasil.blogspot.com). I have come across your work in my endless search for quality English language writing on the subject, and not finding your email, I have taken to commenting instead. Please, if you have the time, I would love to hear any advice you might have for me and my writing.